2013-03-17

A rare streak of several clear nights in a row just after new moon gave me an opportunity to expose fairly deep in all channels. I have in total almost 40 hours of exposures for this target with Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, SII, Ha and OIII filters, so future renditions with different combinations are possible in the future.

Via Flickr:The Bode's nebula (Messier 81, which is actually a grand spiral galaxy), the Cigar galaxy (Messier 82) and NGC 3077 in a family portrait. Seen around the galaxies, but much closer, is faint dusty wisps from our galaxy the Milky Way, in the form of Integrated Flux Nebula illuminated by all the Milky Way's stars.

This image is an enhanced color image, combining "traditional" LRGB data augmented with narrowband Ha, SII and OIII emission bands. I wanted to keep the colors quite natural, so as the narrowband emissions not to overpower the scene.